Since retiring in 2004 I have become a one-man advocate group for high speed rail service in the U.S. Your recent editorial comes up far short of how bad the situation really is ("Railroad's mixed signals," Nov. 25).
That is not to say your paper is unaware, as you have done a super job of covering the rails and the hoops they have to jump to get through Congress. The initial bills get passed but then decades pass before it can find the money to actually do anything.
I know the number of daily trains that creep through the antiquated Howard Street tunnel, a vital link in the entire East Coast service. Just this week we learned of a single rail, rusted-out bridge on life support in Pittsburgh that has over 100 trains a day pass over it.
I cringe as I watch countries once considered inferior to ours that have modern bullet trains. In this age where we can hold a wireless phone in our hand and look at the person we are talking to on the International Space Station you would think we could do better on the rails.
As a youth I would often travel to Ocean City for weekend fun. Now that I am older I cannot for the life of me understand why MARC cannot run a train there. When I was a child my dad could hop on a train at Mount Royal station and go to the races at Laurel and Bowie.
Today the time it takes to deliver a train load of lumber is over two weeks, which is totally unacceptable. This country desperately needs two independent sets of rails, one for cargo and one for high-speed passenger service. And once we have them they can serve as emergency back-ups for each other.
Steven Davidson, New Windsor